Saturday, January 21, 2012
Google To Penalize Web sites WIth Many ads At The Top
of Pages

Google is launching an algorithmic change that looks
at the layout of a webpage and the amount of content
you see on the page once you click on a result.

The change will affect webstes which make it difficult
for users to find the actual content and have to
scroll down the page past a slew of ads. So sites that
don't have much content "above-the-fold" can be
affected by this change.

Placing ads above-the-fold is quite common for many
websites; these ads often perform well and help
publishers monetize online content. This algorithmic
change does not affect sites who place ads
above-the-fold to a normal degree, but affects sites
that go much further to load the top of the page with
ads to an excessive degree or that make it hard to
find the actual original content on the page. This new
algorithmic improvement tends to impact sites where
there is only a small amount of visible content
above-the-fold or relevant content is persistently
pushed down by large blocks of ads.

This algorithmic change noticeably affects less than
1% of searches globally, Google added.